British PM’s envoy holds talks with Taliban in Afghanistan - Al Jazeera English

UK says the two sides discussed Afghanistan’s deepening humanitarian crisis and ‘terrorism’, among other subjects.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s special envoy has held talks with senior members of Afghanistan’s new Taliban government in Kabul, officials said.

Senior civil servant Simon Gass met Deputy Prime Ministers Abdul Ghani Baradar and Abdul Salam Hanafi on Tuesday, the British foreign office said.

They discussed how the United Kingdom could help Afghanistan address a deepening humanitarian crisis, “terrorism” and the need for safe passage for those who want to leave the country.

“They also raised the treatment of minorities and the rights of women and girls,” a British government spokesman said.

“The [UK] government continues to do all it can to ensure safe passage for those who wish to leave, and is committed to supporting the people of Afghanistan.”

Gass was accompanied by the charge d’affaires of the UK Mission to Afghanistan in Doha.

Abdul Qahar Balkhi, the Taliban’s foreign ministry spokesman, said the meeting “focused on detailed discussions about reviving diplomatic relations between both countries”.

He added that Afghanistan’s foreign minister wanted the UK to “begin a new chapter of constructive relations”.

Al Jazeera’s Stefanie Dekker, reporting from Kabul, said the visit is “significant” because there is now an “open line of communication” between the UK and the Taliban.

“I think this is what the international community is doing, it’s using this fact of international recognition of the Taliban as the legal official governing body of this country, to try and put pressure on the group to adhere to certain norms that they’d like to see,” Dekker said.

“We are in a time when the Taliban is seeking this international legitimacy, they need the millions … of dollars in funds to help get this country forward,” she added, citing Afghanistan’s dire economic situation, and concerns about drought and famine.

“What you’re seeing is a political dance,” Dekker said. “I don’t think it means they are any close to officially recognising them as the government, but a dialogue is in place.”

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2021-10-05 15:36:56Z
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Afghanistan: Former British soldier who was arrested by Taliban as it seized control in country flown out of country - Sky News

A former British soldier who was arrested by the Taliban has been flown out of Afghanistan with a visiting UK delegation, Sky News understands.

Ben Slater, who ran his business Nomad Concepts Group from the Afghan capital, was detained by the Taliban last month while trying to help hundreds of Afghans to leave the country.

However, he was allowed to fly out of Kabul to the Qatari capital of Doha on Tuesday on a special flight that was arranged by the Qatari government to transport two senior British diplomats in and out of the country, according to a UK government source.

Image: Ben Slater had claimed the Foreign Office failed to approve visas for the evacuation of himself and his staff from Kabul airport

The precise details of how his exit was arranged were not immediately clear.

Sir Simon Gass, the Prime Minister's High Representative for Afghan Transition, and Dr Martin Longden, Chargé d'Affaires of the UK Mission to Afghanistan, based in Doha, formed the first UK delegation to Afghanistan to meet with the Taliban since the collapse of the previous UK-backed Afghan government and withdrawal of British and other NATO forces.

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The diplomats spoke with Taliban Foreign Minister Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi and Deputy Prime Ministers Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar Akhund and Mawlawi Abdul-Salam Hanafi.

They "discussed how the UK could help Afghanistan to address the humanitarian crisis, the importance of preventing the country from becoming an incubator for terrorism, and the need for continued safe passage for those who want to leave the country", a UK government spokesperson said.

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"They also raised the treatment of minorities and the rights of women and girls," the spokesperson said.

Image: Sir Simon Gass, the Prime Minister's High Representative for Afghan Transition meets Taliban Foreign Minister Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi

A statement on Twitter which appeared to be from a Taliban foreign affairs spokesman said: "The meeting focused on detailed discussions about reviving diplomatic relations between both countries, assurance of security by IEA (Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan) for all citizens entering legally, and humanitarian assistance by UK for the Afghans."

Abdul Qahar Balkhi claimed the UK delegation had said Boris Johnson was "seeking to build relations with IEA while taking into account prevailing circumstances" while the Afghan side said the UK "must take positive steps regarding relations and co-operation, and begin a new chapter of constructive relations".

Image: The UK diplomats 'raised the treatment of minorities and the rights of women and girls'

He added: "We expect others to also not work towards weakening our government."

The Taliban took control of Afghanistan after the western-backed government fell in August.

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2021-10-05 13:52:30Z
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Record number of Chinese planes enter Taiwan air defence zone - BBC News - BBC News

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2021-10-05 09:33:36Z
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Facebook down: Zuckerberg apologises for six-hour outage - BBC News

Reuters

Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg has apologised for the "disruption" caused after its social media services went down for almost six hours - impacting more than 3.5bn users worldwide.

The billionaire said sorry after an internal technical issue took Facebook, Messenger, Whatsapp and Instagram offline at about 16:00 GMT on Monday.

The scramble to bring it back online eventually succeeded at around 22:00.

But it is likely to increase scrutiny of the social media giant's reach.

For hours, potentially billions of people found themselves without the social media tools they relied upon to keep in touch with friends and family. Others reportedly found they could not access services which required a Facebook login.

Meanwhile, small businesses around the world, which use social media to connect with customers, were faced with the prospect of an unexpected financial hit.

Mr Zuckerberg himself was thought to have lost an estimated $6bn (£4.4bn) from his personal fortune at one point as Facebook shares plummeted, according to the business website Fortune's tracking software.

Downdetector, which tracks outages, said some 10.6 million problems were reported around the world - the largest number it had ever recorded.

• Users flood Twitter with jibes
• Facebook whistleblower reveals identity

Facebook later said it had been brought offline by a faulty configuration change which not only impacted the websites and apps, but also affected the company's internal tools.

Those tools included Facebook's internal email and even employee work passes.

Some reports suggest that Facebook headquarters was in "meltdown". Even "the people trying to figure out what this problem was" couldn't access the building, New York Times technology reporter Sheera Frenkel told the BBC.

The New York Times reports that the problem was eventually resolved after a group managed to get into a California data centre and reset the servers. The company has not confirmed this.

Facebook has said it is working to understand what happened so it can "make our infrastructure more resilient". Tech experts have described the issue as being akin to the social media giant falling off the internet's map, so it could not be found.

The company said there was "no evidence that user data was compromised".

The outage comes at a particularly difficult time for the company, which is finding itself increasingly under pressure over its reach and impact on society.

On Sunday, former Facebook employee Frances Haugen told CBS news the company had prioritised "growth over safety".

On Tuesday she will testify before a Senate subcommittee in a hearing titled "Protecting Kids Online", about the company's research into Instagram's effect on the mental health of young users.

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2021-10-05 10:31:33Z
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'It's not over yet': La Palma crater collapses hurling 'volcanic bombs' - ITV News

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1. 'It's not over yet': La Palma crater collapses hurling 'volcanic bombs'  ITV News
2. New eruptions from La Palma volcano as lava produced with more force - BBC News  BBC News
3. La Palma volcano: New earthquakes hit Spanish island as fresh lava surge comes amid crater collapse  Sky News
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5. Quake info: Light mag. 3.4 earthquake - La Palma Island, 13 km south of Los Llanos de Aridane, Spain, on Sunday, Oct 3, 2021 11:06 pm (GMT +1) - 3 user experience reports  VolcanoDiscovery
6. View Full coverage on Google News

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2021-10-04 20:51:02Z
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Oil spill from broken pipeline pollutes California beaches - Financial Times

Clean-up crews worked on Monday to contain the damage from an oil spill off the coast of California that dumped up to 3,000 barrels of oil into the Pacific Ocean and has closed the beach in a community known as “Surf City”.

The spill on Saturday is thought to have been caused by a broken pipeline connected to an offshore platform owned by Houston-based Amplify Energy.

Shares in Amplify, which closed its production and pipeline operations in the Beta Field where the oil was pumped, fell by 43.8 per cent to $3.23 on Monday.

Huntington Beach, about 40 miles south of Los Angeles and home of the US Open of Surfing, was hit hardest. Mayor Kim Carr said 13 square miles of ocean and coastline were covered in oil and that an “ecological disaster” was unfolding. Dead fish and birds have washed up on the beach, which the mayor warned could be closed for months.

Oil was also threatening to wash ashore further south in Newport Beach and Laguna Beach, some of the most expensive coastline in the country.

Michelle Steel, a Republican congresswoman from the Orange County district that includes Huntington Beach, has asked the Biden administration to issue a disaster declaration. Orange County was once a bedrock of the Republican party but has recently handed important victories to the Democrats.

The spill has cast a spotlight on the risks posed by California’s ageing offshore oil and gas infrastructure. There are 23 oil and gas platforms operating in federally controlled waters more than three miles off the California coast, most of which have been running for more than 40 years, according to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, a US agency.

The Beta Field facilities were built in the late 1970s and early 1980s and the area today produces about 3,600 barrels a day of oil.

Amplify has been cited for dozens of environmental infractions over the years, including 72 “incidents of non-compliance” that were serious enough to force the company to shut down equipment on the platform, according to federal regulatory data.

Martyn Willsher, Amplify chief executive, told a press conference on Monday that an anchor from a ship was “one of the distinct possibilities” for the cause of the spill.

He said his company would pay for the clean-up. “Whatever needs to be done, we’ll take care of it . . . We have significant insurance, in addition to our funds on hand,” he said.

New offshore leasing and drilling in state-owned waters was halted after a spill in Santa Barbara, California that was the largest in the country when it took place in 1969.

Willsher told analysts in August that the company planned to drill two new wells at its field in the fourth quarter of this year, saying the “strong commodity price environment” meant the project could yield “significant free cash flow”. US crude hit a seven-year high on Monday.

Amplify is the successor company to Memorial Production Partners, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in early 2017 after an earlier oil price downturn.

California, home to one of America’s early oil booms in the 1920s, has reported declining crude output for years but remains the seventh-largest producer in the US, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Environmentalists said the spill should accelerate California’s efforts to halt oil production.

Two California lawmakers, US senator Dianne Feinstein and congressman Jared Huffman, introduced legislation this year seeking to ban oil and gas drilling in federal waters such as at the Beta Field.

In April, Gavin Newsom, California governor, asked the state’s Air Resources Board to develop a plan to phase out oil extraction across the state by no later than 2045. His administration has sought to halt issuance of permits for hydraulic fracturing, a technique for extracting oil and gas, by January 2024.

Officials are now looking to California’s waters for their potential to produce wind power. In May, the Biden administration started to push forward plans to lease two large areas off the northern California coast to offshore wind development.

Amplify’s largest shareholder is Avenue Capital Group, an investment firm co-founded by billionaire investor Marc Lasry, which owned a stake of 7 per cent, according to recent regulatory filings.

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2021-10-04 19:51:17Z
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Taiwan reports record number of Chinese planes in defence zone - BBC News

Getty Images

Taiwan has urged Beijing to stop "irresponsible provocative actions" after 56 Chinese warplanes entered its air defence zone on Monday - the largest ever reported incursion by China's air force.

Taiwan called Beijing the "chief culprit" for recent tensions.

But China has blamed the United States for increased agitations with Taiwan.

China sees democratic Taiwan as a breakaway province, but Taiwan sees itself as a sovereign state.

The island has been complaining for more than a year about China's air force repeatedly flying nearby.

Since Friday, China has sent almost 150 aircraft into Taiwan's defence zone.

The latest mission included 34 J-16 fighters and 12 nuclear-capable H-6 bombers, which all flew in an area near the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands, according to a map provided by the Taiwanese government.

Four more Chinese fighters were spotted late on Monday, taking the total to 56 aircraft in one day.

• EXPLAINER: What's behind the China-Taiwan divide?

Taiwan's top China policy-making body, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), accused Beijing of "seriously damaging the status quo of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait".

"We demand the Beijing authorities immediately stop its non-peaceful and irresponsible provocative actions," MAC spokesman Chiu Chui-cheng said in a statement.

"China is the culprit for causing tensions between the two sides of the (Taiwan) Strait and it has further threatened regional security and order," he added, saying Taiwan "will never compromise and yield" to threats.

The US on Sunday urged China to stop its "provocative" military activities near Taiwan.

In response, China accused Washington of being the provocateurs, while warning against supporting Taiwanese independence.

"Engaging in Taiwan independence is a dead end. China will take all steps needed and firmly smash any Taiwan independence plots," the ministry said.

"China's determination and will to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity is unwavering."

The US should stop supporting and "inflating" Taiwan separatist forces, it added.

China and Taiwan: The basics

• Why do China and Taiwan have poor relations? China and Taiwan were divided during a civil war in the 1940s, but Beijing insists the island will be reclaimed at some point, by force if necessary

• How is Taiwan governed? The island has its own constitution, democratically elected leaders, and about 300,000 active troops in its armed forces

• Who recognises Taiwan? Only a few countries recognise Taiwan. Most recognise the Chinese government in Beijing instead. The US has no official ties with Taiwan but does have a law which requires it to provide the island with the means to defend itself

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2021-10-04 18:11:37Z
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